Google will soon bring Chrome to ARM64 Linux

Google on Thursday announced that it will finally launch Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices in the second quarter of 2026. This fills a long-standing gap that has left users of Arm-powered Linux hardware without access to the company’s full browser ecosystem.

In its announcement, Google says that, “Launching Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices allows more users to enjoy the seamless integration of Google’s most helpful services into their browser. This move addresses the growing demand for a browsing experience that combines the benefits of the open-source Chromium project with the Google ecosystem of apps and features.”

Chromium, the open-source project Chrome itself is based on, has been available on ARM64 Linux for years through the usual distribution repositories, snaps and community-maintained builds. But Chrome, with its full Google account sync, password manager, the Chrome Web Store, Google Pay integration, and support for streaming services like Netflix, has not.

What took so long?

Chrome’s ARM64 Linux has been a bit of a mystery, given that Google shipped Chrome for Arm-based Apple Silicon devices in 2020, followed by a Windows on Arm build in 2024. Historically, Chromium’s build infrastructure was deeply x86-centric. Native ARM64 builds required workarounds, and the Chromium bug tracker request for official ARM64 Linux support was marked “Won’t Fix” as recently as late 2024.

ChromeOS, too, has long supported ARM-based devices, too, and ChromeOS Flex may even run on a modern Raspberry Pi, but Google owns the entire ChromeOS stack

For users who use Linux on ARM64 machines, Firefox has been an alternative to Chromium for the last two years. The Firefox team launched ARM64 Linux builds through its Nightly channel in April 2024, then promoted the builds to stable with Firefox 136 in March 2025. Other Chromium-based browsers, including Brave and Microsoft Edge, still lack official ARM64 Linux builds.

Also on the DGX Spark

Google notes that it is also bringing Chrome to Nvidia’s software packaging service so users with DGX Spark devices — Nvidia’s $4,000 Mac Mini-like desktop supercomputer — can easily install it, too. That’s a small market, but that’s also true for the overall ARM64 Linux market. These are still niche devices like the DGX Spark and System76’s Thelma Astra (or Raspberry Pi 5, but performance may be an issue there).

In the cloud, Linux on Arm servers is very much a mature product, but Chrome isn’t exactly the killer app there.

Google frames this release as a commitment to the Linux community and the Arm ecosystem: “This launch marks a major milestone in our commitment to the Linux community and the Arm ecosystem. We look forward to seeing how developers and power-users leverage Chrome on this next generation of high-performance devices.”

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